


Norbury (The Six Thatchers)

by PlaidAdder



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s04e01 The Six Thatchers, Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 08:28:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10081448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidAdder/pseuds/PlaidAdder
Summary: I guess I will now do the pedant thing and explain why this episode takes the canon-reference game to the next level.





	

So, the time I spent rereading ACD canon over the last few days paid off. I mean some of these references I was always going to get: the code name “Porlock” (the name of the Moriarty agent who tips Holmes off in _Valley of Fear_ ”); the case of the killer jellyfish (”The Lion’s Mane”), the dude whose wife left him is used to pack several in (the semi-obliterated tattoo from “Gloria Scott;” ‘I thought for a moment you’d done something clever’ from “Naval Treaty;” I also think there may be a touch of Red-Headed Man in there but could not swear to it), the flyby references to cases during the client montage (most of them have some connection to canon, and I particularly appreciated the shout-out to the awful “[The Engineer’s Thumb](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/155117032789/plaidder-rereads-acd-canon-the-adventure-of-the)”). And in any case, I would have appreciated the two most meaningful and heartbreaking ones, both dropped in that scene at 221B with Sherlock and Mrs. Hudson: “Work is the best antidote to sorrow” and “whisper the word ‘Norbury’ in my ear.” 

I guess I will now do the pedant thing and explain why this takes the canon-reference game to the next level: if you have ever wondered what “tragic irony” means, this scene is it. Both references are completely appropriate, in terms of context, and also horribly wrong. In “Empty House,” after informing the reader that Holmes somehow found out about his “sad bereavement,” i.e., Mary’s death, Watson reports Holmes’s one comment on the subject: “Work is the best antidote to sorrow.” “The Six Thatchers” drops that line at exactly the same narrative point (right after we learn about Mary’s death), but that only marks how painfully the _Sherlock_ narrative has just deviated from ACD canon’s: Sherlock is trying to assuage his own sorrow, not John’s, and instead of being (as it is in “Empty House”) a more or less open invitation to a new and newly intimate/committed life together, it’s a bewildered comment on his own isolation and grief. 

Choosing Norbury as Vivian’s last name is even better. Gatiss deliberately keeps it back from us at the beginning (when Sherlock asks the secretary what her name is she only gives him “Vivian”) so that it won’t tip anyone off, then introduces it at exactly the right moment, which is during the final confrontation in the aquarium. If you know “The Yellow Face,” then you know that Norbury is the location of a mystery that Holmes fails to solve, and that at the end of that story, Holmes asks Watson to whisper ‘Norbury’ in his ear whenever he gets a swelled head. So, ‘Norbury’ is their private code word for ‘failure.’ But when Holmes says this in “Yellow Face,” he is also referencing a popular anecdote about Julius Caesar, who is supposed to have been attended during triumphal processions by a slave holding a laurel crown behind his head who used to whisper, “Remember you are mortal.” So 1) “remember you are mortal” is basically the Theme of the entire episode, so you get triple points for that one Gatiss, and 2) when Sherlock says Vivian’s last name, it’s at a point in the episode when we THINK we know what failure he’s talking about (his and Mycroft’s failure to finger Vivian as the one who betrayed AGRA), but we are tragically wrong, because the REAL failure is yet to come (Sherlock’s ‘failure’ to protect Mary, more on why the scare quotes in a moment). So for Sherlock to ask Mrs. Hudson to whisper Norbury in his ear brings ACD canon and _Sherlock_ together in an extremely complex way. It’s right–from Sherlock’s point of view, this is definitely his biggest failure to date, and his asking to be reminded of it signals a new and obviously frightening understanding of his own emotional limitations–and yet this makes us feel all the more how tragically wrong this situation is (Sherlock, Mrs. Hudson, and we all know that John should be the person he’s talking to, but he can’t be, and that really brings all the pain home without putting Sherlock through an out-of-character emotional display). 

Gatiss also did a decent job of using “The Six Napoleons” to fake us out, but that was probably mainly for his own amusement. Sherlock’s dismissal of the “black pearl of the Borgias”– “It’s a pearl; get another one”–is a clever little reminder that Gatiss’s audience is a little harder to captivate than Doyle’s was, and that our imperial fantasies tend to be less focused on sparkly rocks. (Indeed, over break I read Anthony Doerr’s _All The Light We Cannot See_ , and hands down the thing I had the least patience with was its fascination with a possibly cursed diamond of Eastern origin; in 2014, you’re going back to the fucking Moonstone and expecting nobody to notice? REALLY?) He doesn’t ask us to take the idea that it REALLY IS the pearl after all seriously for very long; and given that the pool fight happens halfway through the episode, I knew it wasn’t going to be. I was more taken in by the “English woman” mystery, but the moment Sherlock got that look in his eye at the Vauxhall Bridge, I thought, “Oh, it’s the secretary.” And lo. In the same way, once John’s therapist showed up on screen and we couldn’t see who she was talking to, I thought, “It’s going to be Sherlock,” and lo. (By the way: John’s therapist should not have agreed to take Sherlock as a client. I’m just saying.)

But of course, much as I enjoy all this, I am of course skirting round and only gingerly touching the big news of this episode, which is of course the Death and the Rift.

And here we come to the disappointment.

If you’re following me and you’re a Sherlock fan you’re probably aware that my reading of Mary and of their marriage has always been pretty dark. “The Six Thatchers” is meant to be all about Mary’s Dark Past; but at the end of the day, unless more revelations are coming, Mary is laid to rest as pretty much the woman that S3 always told us she was: someone genuinely in love with John who never meant either him or Sherlock harm, and who only lied about her past and her identity because she was running from it. And I find this disappointing. 

One, because it means that after taking that little detour in “His Last Vow,” _Sherlock_ has basically brought Mary’s characterization right back to the original Mary Morstan’s: loyal, devoted, loving, nurturing, long-suffering, tragically dead. This, I continue to maintain, is absolutely incompatible with her shooting Sherlock at close range and nearly killing him in “His Last Vow.” Absolutely incompatible. She apologizes for it on her death-…death-floor, I guess, as if it were an accident or a regrettable impulse, and this is basically I guess how Gatiss and Moffat have decided to treat it. Well, I can’t treat it that way and I can’t see Mary that way and therefore a lot of the Mary stuff in this episode did not work for me, emotionally, the way it was supposed to. During her death in the aquarium, for instance, I could objectively appreciate all the performances (Abbington’s was very good, but especially Freeman’s, which is a fantastic payoff for everything I talk about it in [Things John Watson Doesn’t Talk About](http://plaidadder.tumblr.com/post/154466429794/things-john-watson-doesnt-talk-about)). 

But I was also irritatingly aware of all the things that have always pissed me off about S3 and how this scene is being used to sweep all that under the Redemptive Death Rug. She tells Sherlock that they’re even; this scene is obviously also about manipulating the viewers into canceling all of Mary’s debts (she takes a bullet in the chest exactly like the one she put into his). Well, in this situation, Sherlock fought his way back through the sheer knowledge that John Needed Him; why couldn’t Mary do the same? Because _Sherlock,_ at the end of the day, wants Mary out of the way just as Doyle did from “Scandal in Bohemia” onward. Because of ACD canon if for no other reason, Mary’s always had that appointment in Samarra. I knew Mary wasn’t getting out of S4 alive. I didn’t expect she would be disposed of this early; but again, even without all the FORESHADOWING, Mary’s death was never going to be a shock.

But what I’m perhaps most impatient with at this point, really, is Sherlock’s Vow. That John holds Sherlock responsible for Mary’s death isn’t out of character, nor is the fact that his reaction to that is to freeze Sherlock out completely. John has been repressing anger about Sherlock since he met him and he still hasn’t processed Sherlock’s ‘death’ and abandonment; this would be completely explicable as John’s long-suppressed rage at Sherlock’s treatment of him finally finding something John considers an adequate justification. It’s the way this all keeps being referred back to that promise Sherlock made at John and Mary’s wedding that I hate. So Sherlock promised he would always keep John, Mary, and the baby safe. Well, that was an impossible promise. Nobody’s safe. Death has appointments with ALL of us, somewhere and someday. Yet the show keeps holding him to it. The first consequence of this Unbreakable Vow was Sherlock killing Magnussen to protect Mary. On the evidence of “The Six Thatchers,” we must now accept his motives without irony and his evaluation of John and Mary’s love as true and irreplaceable _and worth more than his own life_ as accurate. The next consequence, evidently, is going to be the (obviously temporary) loss of John’s love. Well, Mary’s death is manifestly not Sherlock’s fault. John’s the one who tells Mary she should be the one to go to the meeting at the aquarium; if he’s looking for people to blame, he could start there. But that’s all beside the main point, which is: Mary’s death is at least partly Mary’s choice. She is the one who tries to save Sherlock from that bullet. Did she know she was going to take the bullet? I’m guessing probably; she is after all a professional assassin, she ought to know how fast bullets move. We also are given a lot of evidence that Mary, ever since “His Last Vow,” has not expected to live long and die old; and honestly, maybe, she doesn’t want to. She was not expecting to have children (the pregnancy is obviously a surprise to both John and Mary). At the first opportunity she abandons John and Rosamund (to “save” them, of course; but it also gets her out of the house and back into the game). And the other person responsible for Mary’s death is Vivian Norbury. And yet Sherlock is the one made responsible for an act that was the result of two decisions made by two women. 

Maybe I’d take that better if it weren’t for the fact that Mary dies talking about how good and wonderful John is and what a privilege it was for someone Dark like her to be married to him just for one brief happy moment. I mean…this is the 21st century version of the Woman With A Past erasing herself from the narrative so that the man who gave her the love she doesn’t deserve and the daughter whose innocent life would be forever imperiled by her continued survival can go on free and clear without her. Moffat and Gatiss have just substituted violence for sex; instead of ex-lovers, she’s got ex-assassin buddies pursuing her, preventing her from enjoying the kind of domestic bliss reserved for the ‘good’ women. 

You can maybe tell that this is not my favorite trope.

Anyway. As I said, it’s technically, and from a storytelling POV, better than S3; so I will continue with the rest of S4. I guess it is a relief to say goodbye to Mary, in the end. As for the Rift, it will obviously be over in S2, because obviously John will be put in some kind of peril from which Sherlock will have to save him at great cost to himself, so I can’t really break my heart over it too much, sad as it is.


End file.
